BUDGET vs REBATE vs LOCATION; Indie films doing the most with money.

The first question about any state incentive is always the rate. Texas pays 25%. Georgia pays 30%. California pays 35%. New Mexico pays 25%. Line them up that way and California wins, Georgia takes second, and Texas is a distant tie for third.

That ranking is wrong, and not by a little. The rate is half the calculation. The other half is the base, meaning how much of your budget each state lets you multiply the rate against. The four programs define it four different ways, and the spread between those definitions is wider than the spread between the rates.

So I ran three pictures against all four states. A $252,000 feature in Austin that clears the Texas floor by two thousand dollars. A $2.5 million feature in Dallas. A $5 million feature in Terlingua, where the rural uplift comes into it. Here is what came back.

The model, so you can argue with it.

None of this is a quote. It is a model, and a model is only as good as its assumptions, so here are mine, stated plainly enough that you can reject them.

Eighty-five percent of the budget is spent in the shooting state. Above-the-line fees run 15% of budget, half of that brought in from out of state. Imported crew is another 3%. Then each state’s own rules get applied to those same figures. That last step is the whole point. The budget never changes. The base does.

A $252,000 feature in Austin.

Everyone local. Every vendor in Texas. Nothing imported, so nothing gets carved out, and $250,000 of it lands as eligible Texas spend. That clears the program floor by two thousand dollars.

Texas pays 5% of $250,000. Twelve thousand five hundred dollars, in cash, after verification.

Georgia pays nothing. Georgia’s floor is $500,000 of in-state spend and this picture is half of it. California pays nothing either, for a different reason worth knowing: California tests the budget rather than the spend, and its floor is a million dollars. This picture is a quarter of the way there.

New Mexico pays $62,500. Five times Texas, on the same spend, because New Mexico has no minimum at all and enters at 25%. Shoot it sixty miles outside Albuquerque or Santa Fe and the rural uplift takes it to $87,500.

At this size two of the four programs do not exist for you, and the one that pays best is not Texas.

A $2.5 million feature in Dallas.

Now all four are live, and the base column starts doing the work.

Texas counts $1,863,000 and pays $466,000 in cash. The picture cleared the $1.5 million tier, so the rate is 25%. What Texas will not count is the imported half of the above-the-line and the department heads flown in. Wages paid to someone who is not a Texas resident earn nothing here, whatever the work was or wherever it happened.

Georgia counts the whole $2,125,000, because Georgia has no residency test of any kind, and pays 30%. That is $638,000, the biggest number on the page. It is also not money. It is a transferable credit, and a production with no Georgia tax liability has to sell it. Every project certified since January 2023 goes through a mandatory state audit before it can. Sell in the usual range and $638,000 becomes something between $561,000 and $599,000.

New Mexico counts $1,938,000 and pays $485,000, refundable. It beats Texas here on cash. What New Mexico throws out is different from what Texas throws out: non-resident director, producer and writer fees earn nothing, while non-resident performing artists still qualify.

California has the best rate of the four and the smallest base, because California excludes above-the-line compensation entirely. Resident, non-resident, it makes no difference. Thirty-five percent of $1,750,000 is $613,000. The catch is the word if. California runs a competitive allocation ranked on a jobs ratio, so qualifying and receiving are two different events.

A $5 million feature in Terlingua.

This is the one I expected Texas to win. It does not.

Terlingua sits in Brewster County, which has fewer than ten thousand people. Texas offers a rural uplift of 2.5% to a project that puts at least 35% of its filming days or man hours in a county of 300,000 or fewer. That takes the picture from 25% to 27.5%, and $931,000 to $1,024,000. Real money for going somewhere hard.

New Mexico’s rural uplift is ten points. Not two and a half. On a base of $3,875,000 that is $1,356,000 against Texas at $1,024,000. A third more, in cash, for the same decision to shoot far from a city.

Georgia has no rural uplift on the production credit at all, so remote costs you there and pays you nothing back. California independents are shut out of the out-of-zone uplift, so the same holds.

If going remote is the entire idea of your movie, New Mexico beats Texas on the incentive and it is not close. I would rather you hear that from me now than work it out in month two.

What the base column is actually telling you.

Four states, four definitions of the same word.

Texas counts wages paid to Texas residents, capped at the first million each, plus payments to Texas vendors. That is the entire list.

Georgia counts essentially everything spent in Georgia, with no residency screen anywhere in the program.

New Mexico counts most of it, and throws out non-resident director, producer and writer fees outright.

California throws out all above-the-line compensation, whoever earned it.

The same script, the same budget and the same shooting days produce four different denominators before anyone multiplies by anything. Texas has the narrowest of the four. That is the trade for a program that pays cash rather than paper, carries no per-project cap, and does not make you win a contest first. If you want the Texas program itself rather than the comparison, I wrote it up in plain English and again when SB 22 rebuilt the ladder.

The number the state’s own website will not give you.

One thing I found while checking these figures is worth more than the model.

The Texas Film Commission’s program page states the residency requirement as 35% of paid crew and 35% of paid cast including extras. Two separate tests, which is itself a thing producers get wrong. What the page does not say is that 35% has an expiration date.

Texas Government Code section 485.023(2) steps it to 40% on September 1, 2027, then 45% in 2029 and 50% in 2031. The trigger is the date the project begins principal photography, not the date you apply.

So a picture that applies this fall and starts shooting in October 2027 is held to 40%, and a producer who built the crew mix off the Commission’s page has no way to know that from the page. Residency is the one requirement you cannot repair at wrap. The people either were residents when you hired them or they were not, and no paperwork in the world moves that percentage afterward.

Both facts are correct where they sit. They're just not sitting on the same page. I read both on September 5, 2026.

Every interpretive question about the Texas program belongs with the Texas Film Commission at 512-463-9200. They have said plainly that they are the first, last and only source to trust on it, and they are right. The Georgia, New Mexico and California figures come from those states’ own agencies and statutes, read the same week. All four programs change. Confirm before you commit.

The sheet.

All of it fits on two pages. Download the glance sheet, free and with nothing to fill in. Three pictures, four states, every figure sourced, and the rounding done so that base times rate reproduces each number and you can check the arithmetic yourself.

Goldsmith Production Services is the Texas producer of record for productions that are not from Texas. We crew the show, run it, and keep the compliance record as the work happens, so the audit file exists before anyone asks for it. I also wrote about what shooting a feature in Texas taught me about the budget, which is the same lesson from the inside.

If the honest answer is that another state suits your picture better, that is the answer you will get.